Tuesday, September 24, 2013

"Another mistaking of metronomy for feel, vagueness for profundity.
Somewhere in this flabby seven minutes of pffft [Arcade Fire, "Reflketor"] there's a shitty 2
minute song waiting to break out. I'm not being picky. I'm just having
standards i.e demanding that a pop song gives me pleasure, doesn't bore
me, doesn't coast, doesn't come across as entirely unjustifiably pleased
with itself. 'Reflektor' has not one moment of pleasure or wonder in
it, only the smug constant insistence that hey wow, we're cool cos we're
a rock band but we're trying to play disco. (That boom-tish alternated
hi-hat rumble every fucker has down pat when they wanna get 'dancey',
another rhythm section that thinks it's Frantz/Weymouth that hasn't
listened to enough Dunbar/Shakespear to even come close). Broken down to
it's constituent elements everything that should work is in place on
'Reflektor' (even that 'k'), James Murphy pushing all the right buttons
to try and heat things up, eventually failing to stop it flailing
because what's being played is so bereft of heart and purpose, the
changes so signposted and monotonously run through you're simply witness
to them going round them over and over again without any real sense of
movement or import. Simply not good enough when the frontman and band
are clearly such tedious & arrogant individuals they have to hide
their non-personas behind 'zany' masks (and what a fucking tired trick
that has become for a whole generation of indie meh-merchants) in the
Cjorbin-annointed video. If you're going to make music like this you
need words interesting enough, a personality big enough or voice
intriguing enough (Bowie, Grace, Donna) to imbue all that rotational
repetition with a sense of dramatic art and change. 'Reflektor' contains
none of that, just sits wobbling like a wodge of flavourless jelly
slopped on a bassbin, Bowie's fleeting appearance offering merely an
aggravatingly tantalising glimpse of what might've been if a human being
rather than a pack of 'tastemakers' had had a go at this 'song'. Pass."

Thursday, September 19, 2013

Dance explosion, fueled by euphoriant drug, is followed by messy phase when the drug is cut with adulterants and surrogates, leading to bad reactions and deaths.... confusion, excess, paranoia, recklessness and wrecked-ness.

Mixmag with a report on how MDMA powder aka Molly, the cult of which was based on its purity and reliability compared to Ecstasy in pressed pill form, is nowadays, almost inevitably, increasingly turning out to be adulterated or bogus, with thje substitute substances in most cases being the MDMA analogue Methylone.

"The Miami Herald reported that in just 12 months there had been a
staggering 16-fold increase in seizures of methylone, while MDMA
seizures had dropped off a cliff. In 2011, Miami police reports show
drugs sold as Molly were seized and submitted for testing 207 times. The
overwhelming majority – 190 – contained MDMA, while just 17 contained
methylone. But in 2012... testing proved that 278 samples contained methylone, and just 59
contained MDMA"

“Methylone is fun, but I’d rather have MDMA for sure,” [Mark, a London-based DJ] says.
“Methylone makes me sweat like hell, and gives me a tight jaw. The high
isn’t as deep and is a shorter buzz. It can make you quite touchy-feely
and even horny – it’s pretty good for sex, though most guys can’t come
on it. But the thing I least like about it is that it leaves me wanting
more, like coke. Also, methylone is a little more harsh on the comedown
and leaves your heart beating quite hard, whereas MDMA doesn’t,” he
says. “I wouldn’t be totally pissed off if I got some methylone for a
night out, but I’d want to know what I had – and I’d want to pay less
for it.”

As an adulterant, it’s among the least bad things it could be,
nowadays. Luckily, it’s not massively toxic and the dose range isn’t
that different to MDMA – a standard dose is around 100mg, or a tenth of a
gramme, much like ecstasy.Other common adulterants in US pills and capsules include TFMPP, a
vile drug that will make you feel wakeful, hot and restless, and
5-MEO-DipT, a powerful drug that should never be mixed with other
substances as it can react badly and cause spasms.

The report is by Mike Power whose book Drugs 2.0 – The Web Revolution That’s Changing How The World Gets High is an in-depth exploration of modern drug culture and the rise of analogues bought and sold through the internet. More info here.

Friday, September 13, 2013

news that Manixare releasing an album of "new-old" hardcore entitled Living In the Past has got me all confused

as the author of Retromania, I deplore it

as the author of Energy Flash, I adore it

blurb from the website: "A return to the original sound of Hardcore/Jungle Rave from one of the
leading artist at Reinforced Records. Produced by Marc Mac of 4hero,
this stunning 10 track album is full of the same energy and style that
made Manix so crucial to DJs and Ravers of the era.
Packed with all new original fresh tunes but still sounding like a lost
recording from 1993, anthemic pianos, big bass lines and breaks."

Monday, September 9, 2013

and fuck me, the third one in the series is about drum'n'bass! my derision turned out to be prediction

Clive Martin continues his Vice explorations into "scenes that refuse to die"

someone involved, or connected, gave this rationalisation via twitter -- "no one ever claimed these were new things, just that they existed. and as such, justify analysis."

erm, i'd have thunk, to be honest, it had more than enough analysis, drum 'n' bass, over the years.... i confess to being sated, in that department... perhaps that's the reason for its living death, being analysed to death

"refusing to die" (yet ceasing to change, grow, evolve), that would suggest something faintly monstrous, going against nature, about the entity in its umheimliche persistence.... a calcified recalcitrance in stubborn opposition to the natural arc of genres that carries them through through emergence to maturity and then onto decay, senescence and disappearance

it suggests there's something uncanny about time, in our time

still according to Laurent Fintoni at FACT,
D&B is in ruder health than it's been in many a moon, thanks to
infusions of footwork and reversions to the 93-95 split-tempo,
slow-bass/fast-breaks 80/160 template

some examples from the piece

s'alright... Mark Pritchard's hardly young blood though is he!

s'nice, bit like Hidden Agenda, or J-Magik, or indeed MP's "Amenity", a year or two before the whole scene turned to shite